Yishun jewellery store employee swopped gold pieces with copies from Taobao, gets over 2 years’ jail

SINGAPORE - An assistant store manager at a jewellery shop stole 24 pieces of gold jewellery worth over $216,000 from his workplace, replacing six of them with copies from online platform Taobao.

Darren Wai Mun Jun, 31, who was then working for CHJ Singapore Jewel in Northpoint Drive, near Yishun Central 1, replaced the remaining 18 pieces with stock items from the store’s inventory.

After that, he pawned all 24 pieces but only got more than $131,000 in cash for them. He used the money to gamble and to settle his debts.

On Aug 20, he was sentenced to two years, four months and two weeks’ jail after pleading guilty to two counts of theft and one count of dealing with the benefits of his criminal conduct.

The authorities have seized 18 pieces of the stolen jewellery from pawnshops, and he has made no restitution.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Teng Yin Hang told the court that Wai started working for CHJ in September 2025.

Two months later, he hatched a plan to replace the jewellery from the store with copies from Taobao.

The DPP said Wai bought many pieces of jewellery from the online platform.

Before making the swops, he would weigh the pieces of jewellery from CHJ that he wanted to replace and selected those from Taobao which matched them in weight and appearance.

He would arrive early or wait for his colleagues to go on their breaks before executing his plan.

To avoid detection, he would switch off the Wi-fi to disable the CCTVs in the shop.

Wai would switch the Wi-fi back on after making the swops.

He was able to match only six pieces of jewellery from CHJ with those from Taobao.

Knowing the store did not have a proper stock-taking system, Wai replaced the other stolen pieces with those from CHJ’s own inventory.

Between December 2025 and January 2026, he made off with 24 pieces of gold jewellery from CHJ. He went to multiple pawnshops to pawn them.

On Jan 21, 2026, one of his colleagues was serving a customer when she realised the weight of a gold bangle she was selling did not match the weight reflected on the price tag.

She found it did not bear a “CHJ” engraving on its inner surface.

The woman checked the other items on display with another colleague and discovered four gold bangles did not belong to CHJ.

Court documents did not disclose what happened next but Wai was arrested that day.

His bail was set at $15,000 on Aug 20, and he will start serving his sentence on Sept 3.

Shaffiq Alkhatib is The Straits Times’ court correspondent, covering mainly criminal cases heard at the State Courts.